Inherently reciprocal verbs in Brazilian Sign Language

Abstract

Among various strategies employed by languages to encode reciprocity, there is the useof lexical reciprocals, which specify this relation inherently to the verb. In this paper, weanalyze verbs that are inherently reciprocal in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) and weshow that they have an interesting pattern, regarding hand specification (with all inherentlyreciprocal verbs being two-handed) and also movement type (whether characterizedby singular or repeated movement as opposed to alternating movement). We willargue in favor of a phonology-semantics interface, in such a way that two-handedness isrelated to participant mapping and the different types ofmovement mark the differencebetween symmetrical and non-symmetrical reciprocals.